There is a scene toward the end of the film in which Dylan and others are riding in a car. Dylan reveals his pure emotion, commenting that he felt he had just been "part of something special," but then quickly changes to his cynical persona when told the press is calling him an anarchist. You can even tell that Dylan has a buzz from the performance just by looking at him. He seems almost gidddy and upbeat for one of the first times and then goes back into trying to maintain the cool "I"m in control" mood. Pennebaker does a prodigious job of showing us Dylan's personal side in only very brief moments. For example, there is a part just before Dylan is to go onstage and he and Alan Price and a few others are goofing around and playing piano. Dylan just in regular conversation casually asks Price if he's still playing with The Animals. Price looks down and says, "It happens .ya know," and tries to nonchalantly brush it off, but we see him biting at his tongue. The moment is almost frozen in time the way Pennebaker shoots it. Pennebaker then gets a marvelous shot of Dylan reflecting sincerely with a kind of uneasy, sympathetic look. The first few times I watched this film, I completely missed that amazing scene and it wasn't until I heard the commentary that I truly saw what a powerful few seconds that was.
Pennebaker does a marvelous job of piecing together interesting sequences of scenes that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. There are terrific sequences of impromptu, hotel room music making. Dylan implemented some incredible treatments of two Hank Williams tunes, "Lost Highway" and "I"m so Lonesome I Could Cry." There is a scene where several female teenage fans are allowed up into Dylan's hotel room for an audience. Dylan is in multi-tasking mode, going about his business while carrying on a conversation at the same time. He tells one girl who is saying that her friends don't think the newly released electric album sounds like him and that she's not going to let her friends do her thinking for her and she understands what he's trying to do.
